Gov. Crist calls for meeting on loopholes in concealed weapons law

Gov. Charlie Crist said Thursday he was concerned about lawbreakers who are licensed to carry guns in Florida and was planning to meet with the commissioner in charge of issuing the licenses to discuss the problem.

The comments from the newly elected governor, who most recently was Florida's attorney general, came in response to a series of stories this week in the South Florida Sun-Sentinel that exposed how more than 1,400 people had valid concealed weapon licenses even though they pleaded guilty or no contest to felonies.

Hundreds of others kept gun licenses despite warrants for their arrests, current domestic violence injunctions or misdemeanor convictions for behaving recklessly with guns.

The governor, speaking briefly after an unrelated public event in Delray Beach, said he has called a meeting with Agriculture and Consumer Services Commissioner Charles H. Bronson, whose office handles the licensing, to see what can be done. It is "an issue that concerns us," Crist said. "We're going to be working with Commissioner Bronson on it."Earlier, House Speaker Marco Rubio told a meeting of the Sun-Sentinel's editorial board that the stories showed " ..... there's something wrong in the system."

"If someone is a dangerous person, who has shown a proclivity for using firearms to hurt other people, then we don't want them having a permit, much less ownership of a firearm," said the speaker, a Miami Republican. "You've raised valid issues that we should look at and examine further."

x More than 410,000 people are licensed in Florida to carry guns concealed, for self-defense.

Last spring the Legislature passed an exemption to Florida's public records law, making the names of people licensed to carry concealed weapons a secret.

The Sun-Sentinel obtained the state's database of license holders before the privacy law took effect July 1. The new law will make future evaluations of the program nearly impossible.

Rubio, who voted for the record closure, said he found good reason for the names to be private but was open to modifying the measure so that "someone or some entity" could cull through the list of licensees and "identify people that shouldn't be on there."

Among the licensees the newspaper profiled were: a Pembroke Pines man who pleaded no contest to shooting his girlfriend in the head as she cooked breakfast; a Tampa man with 22 arrests; six registered sex offenders; a pizza deliveryman wanted for shooting a 15-year-old boy to death; a Kissimmee man whose license was suspended and returned five times; and a prison inmate serving 35 years for sexual battery on a child.

Bronson, in a telephone interview, said he will "give all the facts that we have" to the House and Senate committees that set policy for the licenses. "I'm sure they're going to be interested in this."

But Bronson stopped short of saying he would advocate changes in the law.

A cattle rancher who was elected to a second term in November, Bronson said he has "always been a gun owner. .....

There are a lot of good people out there that own guns that don't commit crimes. I truly don't believe we should punish those who have never done anything wrong because a few have done something wrong."

The Sun-Sentinel found that 1,400 individuals held valid licenses to carry guns in the first half of 2006 even though they had pleaded guilty or no contest to felonies, including assault, burglary, drug possession, child molestation and homicide.

They were eligible because they entered into plea deals that let them avoid formal convictions if they successfully completed their sentences, usually probation. The practice is referred to as the "withholding of adjudication."

Under Florida gun law, people who are given such breaks are eligible to carry guns three years after completing their sentences.

Rubio said the Legislature could consider creating a "new category" in the criminal justice system in which people sentenced for certain crimes would forfeit their rights to carry concealed weapons.

"Our goal has to be to make sure that dangerous people don't have access to weapons," he said.

House Deputy Majority Leader Adam Hasner, R-Delray Beach, who also met with the newspaper, said he is working to increase penalties for people who shoot guns into the air to celebrate events or holidays, such as the Fourth of July.

The change, he said, could include the revocation of concealed weapon permits for the crime.

Current law lets such people keep their gun licenses.

A 69-year-old Fort Lauderdale man was killed New Year's Eve by a stray bullet thought to be fired by a reveler. Said Rubio: "It's crazy."

Megan O'Matz can be reached at momatz@sun-sentinel.com or 954-356-4518. John Maines can be reached at jmaines@sun-sentinel.com or 954-356-4737.